Dacia

Dacia was a historic region in Southeastern Europe, home to a group of people called the Dacians. Its heart was in an area known today as Transylvania, and it stretched south to the Danube River, east to the Black Sea, and west to the Tisza River. The Carpathian Mountains ran through the middle of this land. Today, Dacia roughly matches the country of Romania and parts of several nearby countries including Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine.

A Dacian kingdom formed under a leader named Burebista in 82 BC, uniting the Dacians with another group called the Getae. This kingdom lasted until the Roman Empire conquered it in the year AD 106. Because of these wars, many people were scattered, and the old capital city, Sarmizegetusa Regia, was destroyed. The Romans later built a new town nearby called Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetuza, which became the capital of the Roman province known as Roman province of Dacia. Some Dacians may have stayed in parts of modern-day Northern Romania even after the Romans left, until a time known as the Migration Period began.

Nomenclature

The Dacians were first written about by Ancient Greeks. Famous writers like Herodotus and Thucydides talked about them. They described a group called the Getae, saying they were honorable and fair among the Thracian tribes. The Getae lived near the Scythians and were skilled at shooting arrows while riding horses.

Geographical history

Main article: History of Dacia

The land called Dacia changed shape over time. It was mainly in a place we now call Romania, but it also reached into parts of nearby countries like Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine.

In early times, a king named Burebista made Dacia bigger, stretching it from the Black Sea to a river called the Tisza. Later, after his death, Dacia split into smaller parts and fought among itself. Over the years, Dacia faced many changes, including wars with the Romans. Eventually, the Romans took over most of Dacia and turned it into a part of their empire. Even after the Romans left, parts of Dacia kept their name and culture for a long time.

The extent and location of Dacia varied in its three distinct historical periods (see below):

For earlier events, see Prehistory of Transylvania, Prehistory of Romania, and Celts in Transylvania.

1st century BC

1st century AD

2nd century AD

Main articles: Trajan's Dacian Wars and Roman Dacia

Cities

Main articles: Davae and List of Dacian towns

Long ago, there were many towns in a place called Dacia. A writer named Ptolemy wrote down the names of 43 towns, and about 33 of them had names that came from the Dacian people. Many of these names ended in “dava,” which meant “settlement” or “village.” Some towns had other names that didn’t end this way.

These towns were spread out in different areas. Some were in Dacia itself, like Acidava, Argedava, and Buridava. Others were in places that are now parts of Bulgaria and other nearby regions. There were also towns with names like Gil-doba in Thracia and Thermi-daua in Dalmatia. One town named Pulpu-deva is the same as the modern city of Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

Political entities

Rubobostes

Main article: Rubobostes

The Geto-Dacians lived on both sides of the Tisa river before and after the Celtic Boii were defeated by the Dacians under King Burebista. The Dacian state likely started as a group of tribes united by strong leaders in military and religious matters. In the early 2nd century BC, under King Rubobostes, Dacian power grew in the Carpathian basin after they defeated the Celts, who had been in control of the area.

Oroles

Main article: Oroles

A Dacian kingdom existed as early as the first half of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. Battles with the Bastarnae and the Romans (112–109 BC, 74 BC), where they supported the Scordisci and Dardani, weakened the Dacians.

Burebista

Main article: Burebista

Burebista, who lived at the same time as Julius Caesar, ruled the Geto-Dacian tribes from 82 BC to 44 BC. He reorganised the army and encouraged the people to follow stricter rules. Under his rule, the Dacian Kingdom grew to its largest size. The Bastarnae and Boii were defeated, and even Greek towns like Olbia and Apollonia on the Black Sea acknowledged Burebista's leadership. In 53 BC, Caesar noted that Dacian lands reached the eastern edge of the Hercynian Forest.

Burebista stopped the four main tribes from making their own coins and used Roman coins instead. He moved the Dacian capital from Argedava to Sarmizegetusa Regia. Sarmizegetusa remained the Dacian capital for over a century and reached its height under King Decebalus. The Dacians were so strong that Caesar planned to attack them, but his death in 44 BC stopped these plans. That same year, Burebista was killed, and the kingdom split into four (later five) smaller parts ruled by different leaders.

Cotiso

Main article: Cotisa

One of these smaller states was led by Cotisa, whom Emperor Augustus promised to marry to his young daughter Julia. The Dacians often resisted Roman rule. They took advantage of cold winters to cross the frozen Danube and attack Roman cities in Moesia.

Decebalus

Main article: Decebalus

Decebalus led the Dacians from AD 87 to 106. The borders of his Dacia stretched from the Tisa River in the west, across the Carpathians to the north, and to the Dniester River in the east. His name means "strong as ten men".

Roman conquest

Main articles: Domitian's Dacian War, Trajan's Dacian Wars, and Roman Dacia

When Emperor Trajan looked at Dacia, it had been a goal for Rome since before Julius Caesar. A Roman army had lost a battle at the Battle of Histria earlier.

From AD 85 to 89, the Dacians, led by Decebalus, fought two wars with the Romans. In AD 85, the Dacians crossed the Danube and attacked Moesia. In AD 87, Roman soldiers sent by Emperor Domitian, led by Cornelius Fuscus, were defeated, and Fuscus was killed. After this win, the Dacian leader changed his name to Decebalus. The Romans won at the Battle of Tapae in AD 88, and a peace agreement was made. In AD 88, new Roman forces under Tettius Julianus did well but had to make peace when Domitian lost to the Marcomanni. Decebalus became a friend to Rome, getting teachers, skilled workers, and money. Domitian brought people from Italy to dress like Dacians because he could not take slaves from the war.

Trajan wanted to bring glory to his rule, fix Rome’s money problems, end a shameful peace, and take control of Dacia’s famous treasure and gold mines in Transylvania. His first campaign from 101 to 102 led to the siege of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa, and taking part of the land. Trajan started fighting again, and after several battles, moved toward Sarmizegethusa. Decebalus asked for peace again. He built up his power and attacked Roman soldiers in AD 105. Trajan attacked again, reaching the capital in the Siege of Sarmizegethusa, destroying it. The Dacian king Decebalus died to avoid being captured. Part of Dacia became the Roman province of Dacia Traiana. Trajan then went to fight the Parthian empire, expanding the Roman Empire to its largest size. Rome’s borders in the east were managed through agreements with other states, leading to fewer big fights in that area.

The historian Cassius Dio wrote about some of this history. Trajan built the Column of Trajan in Rome to remember his victory.

Provincial history

Although the Romans took over and destroyed the old Kingdom of Dacia, much of the land stayed outside Roman control. The conquest changed power in the area and led to alliances of Germanic and Celtic tribes against Rome. However, the benefits of the Roman system attracted many Dacians, and many became part of Roman culture (see also Origin of Romanians). In AD 183, war broke out when two men wanting to be emperor, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, showed their skills in fighting.

According to Lactantius, the Roman emperor Decius had to bring back control to Roman Dacia from the Carpo-Dacians under Zosimus.

Over time, Germanic and Celtic groups, especially the Gothic tribes, moved toward Dacia’s borders and started attacking. The Goths finally pushed out the Romans and made Dacia independent again after Emperor Aurelian left in 275.

In AD 268–269, at Naissus, Claudius II won a big battle against the Goths. Since Romans still held Roman Dacia then, it is thought the Goths did not cross the Danube from that area. The Goths who survived did not try to escape through Dacia but went through Thrace. At Dacia’s borders, the Carpi (Free Dacians) were still strong enough to fight five battles against the Romans from AD 301–308. Roman Dacia was left in AD 275 to the Carpi, not the Goths. There were still Dacians in AD 336 fighting Constantine the Great.

The Romans left the province, and, according to the Breviarium historiae Romanae by Eutropius, Roman citizens from Dacia’s towns and lands were moved to Moesia. Under Diocletian, around AD 296, the Romans built forts on both sides of the Danube to protect the border.

Late Roman Age (c. 270 – c. 700)

Constantinian reconquest

In 328, the emperor Constantine the Great built Constantine's Bridge (Danube) at Sucidava (today Corabia in Romania) hoping to take back Dacia, which had been left by Aurelian. In the late winter of 332, Constantine fought with the Sarmatians against the Goths. Bad weather and lack of food hurt the Goths: it is said nearly one hundred thousand died before they agreed to Rome’s rules. Constantine took the title Gothicus Maximus and claimed the land as the new province of Gothia. In 334, after Sarmatian commoners removed their leaders, Constantine fought the tribe and won, extending his control. He settled some Sarmatian exiles as farmers in Illyrian and Roman areas and added others to the army. The new border in Dacia was a large dirt wall, almost 700 km long, called today the Brazda lui Novac line, with support from Castra of Hinova, Rusidava and Castra of Pietroasele. The limes went north of Castra of Tirighina-Bărboși and ended at Sasyk Lagoon near the Dniester River. Constantine took the title Dacicus maximus in 336.

Before 300, the Romans built small forts at Dierna and other places on the north bank of the Danube in modern-day Banat. Roman coins from that time—mostly bronze—have been found there. The Huns destroyed Drobeta and Sucidava in the 440s, but the forts were fixed under Emperor Justinian I (527–565). Coins from the Eastern Roman Empire in the first half of the 6th century show a big military group in Oltenia, a place also known for pottery in Roman styles.

Scythia Minor

The land between the lower Danube and the Black Sea (today Dobrogea in Romania) stayed fully part of the Roman Empire even after Trajan’s Dacia was left. It became a separate province called Scythia Minor around 293.

Christian groups existed in Scythia Minor under Emperor Diocletian. He and his co-emperors ordered the persecution of Christians across the empire, causing many deaths between 303 and 313. Under Emperor Constantine the Great (306–337), a bridge across the Danube was built at Sucidava, a new fort called Constantiana Daphne was made, and old roads in Oltenia were fixed. The lower Danube became the empire’s north border by 369 at the latest, when Emperor Valens met Athanaric—the leader of the Goths—in a boat in the river because Athanaric had promised “never to set foot on Roman soil”.

Though Eastern Roman emperors paid nearby peoples each year to try to keep peace in the Balkans, the Avars often attacked Scythia Minor from the 580s. The Romans left Sucidava in 596 or 597, but Tomis, the last town in Scythia Minor to fight the attackers, fell only in 704.

North of the limes (c. 270 – c. 330)

Transylvania and northern Banat, which were part of Dacia before Trajan’s conquest, had no direct link with the Roman Empire from the 270s. There is no proof they were attacked in the next decades. Towns such as Apulum and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegethusa, and the areas around them stayed lived in, but towns became smaller. Local Christian groups might have existed in Porolissum, Potaissa and other places. Evidence—mainly pottery with "Chi-rho" (Χ-Ρ) signs and other Christian symbols—is “hard to see and not well understood,” as archaeologists Haynes and Hanson say.

Urns found in late 3rd-century grave places at Bezid, Mediaş, and other Transylvanian towns had clear links to sites east of the Carpathians, showing that the Carpians were the first new people to arrive in the old province from nearby lands. Other Carpian groups, pushed by the Goths, also left their homes and sought safety in the Roman Empire around 300. Still, “Carpo-Dacians” were listed among peoples “mixed with the Huns” as late as 379. The Sarmatians of Banat were friends of the empire, shown by a Roman attack in 332 against the Goths, their enemies. Sarmatians were allowed into the empire in 379, but some groups stayed in the Tisa plains until the 460s.

Dacia after the Romans

Main article: Romania in the Early Middle Ages

After the Romans left, several tribes lived in Dacia. By the year 350, groups like the Victohali, Taifals, and Thervingians were there. Archeological finds show that the Gepids were also in the area, especially in Transylvania, sharing space with the Taifals and Thervingians. The Taifals had once been independent but later became allies of the Romans, allowing them to settle in Oltenia.

In 376, a new group, the Huns, took control of the region. They ruled until the death of their leader Attila in 453. After that, the Gepids, under their ruler Ardaric, used Dacia as their base. However, in 566, the Lombards destroyed the Gepid rule. The Lombards then left, and the Avars took over in the late 6th century, ruling for about 230 years. Their power ended when Charlemagne defeated them in 791. During this time, Slavic people also arrived in the area.

Usage in modern culture

Dacia is a big car company from Romania. The company is named after an old kingdom that once existed in the same area. Dacia makes cars that are sold mostly in Europe and North Africa. It is the biggest company in Romania by how much money it makes.